Infectious diseases affect the health of people and animals around the world, causing serious illness and death. Public health efforts have focused on behavioral modification and other public health efforts to reduce the incidences of infection, while treatment regimens for these diseases have focused on pharmaceuticals, such as antibiotics and anti-viral medications. However, educating people about modifying behavior can be difficult, and that approach alone rarely can significantly diminish the incidence of infection. Furthermore, modifying the behavior of domestic or wild animals would not result in diminished infections. Stopping the spread of infections in an animal population typically involves wholesale slaughter. Few vaccines are available or wholly effective, and they tend to be specific for particular conditions.
The rate of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infection is increasing. HIV and its associated acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) accounted for approximately 5% of all deaths in the United States in the year 2000, while over 313,000 persons were reported to be living with AIDS in that same year. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Supplemental Report, 8(1):1-22 (2002). These increasing infection rates have occurred, even though the mode of HIV infection has been known for almost 20 years, and educational programs around the world have promoted behavioral modifications meant to reduce HIV infection. Incidence and death rates due to HIV disease have been decreasing since the mid-90's, in part due to aggressive antiviral therapies, which frequently have toxic side effects and strict dosage schedules. However, even with treatment, the patient is not cured of the disease, and to date, no effective vaccine therapy has been found.
In other diseases, such as infection by the Ebola virus, not only are treatments limited, but containment or prevention of infections is difficult because the life cycle of the virus is not well known. The natural reservoir for the Ebola virus, that is the place or population in nature where the virus resides between human outbreaks, has not yet been identified.
Additionally, different viral strains can rapidly evolve in response to drug usage, producing drug-resistant strains. For example, strains of the influenza virus resistant to amantadine and rimantadine have recently arisen. A recent study of 80 newly-infected people conducted by the AIDS Research Center at Rockefeller University in New York, found that as many as 16.3% of these individuals had strains of HIV associated with resistance to some treatments, and 3.8% appeared to be resistant to several currently available anti-HIV drugs. Thus, a need exists for alternative treatments for infectious disease and methods of designing new drugs to combat infectious disease.